Pine Country Dust Bowl

June 30, 2012

We departed the KOA in Newton, Iowa, after surviving the storm the previous night.  The drive on this part of I80 east was a good road, but not exciting, and that's the way we like it.  Although, it makes for a boring blog.

We arrived at Pine Country RV Park in Belvidere, Illinois around 3 pm.  This was the end of our 3 week 3317 mile jaunt to/ Wisconsin, Minnesota,  South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and Iowa.  Whew!  We don't plan to travel that many miles in the next several months.

We had reserved site number 8 because the site we had when we were here three weeks ago (#26) is a little small for our rig and not very level.  But, when we checked in, we found that once again Pine Country has bumped us off of the site we reserved and had paid in advance.  The same thing happened with our reservations back in May.  But, we had already scouted out other campgrounds before we left and don't intend to return to Pine Country.  However, our reservation has us staying in the dust bowl at Pine Country until July 16th.

This campground has gravel roads and is very dusty due to the drought that has spread over 26 states.  Somehow that dust works its way into everything in the RV and our vehicles.  There is no need to wash the RV or the vehicles, they'll be dusty again before the sun goes down.  We decided to wait and do our cleaning after we depart this campground.  You know...  any excuse not to clean, right?) 

We saw these same dry conditions throughout our entire trip.  Certainly, this means the farmers are really suffering and we can expect higher food prices.  Not good!

Before departing on our trip 3 weeks ago, we had taken our car to our friends house to store while we were gone.  So, after we were set up and had delicious pit BBQ from a place Belvidere, we headed over to Glen and Laura's house to pick up our car.  Since Sean has a drivers permit, so we let him drive the truck over to their house and then drive the car back to the campground.  It's about a 40 minute trip each way.  It was the end of a very long, tiring day but great to end it with by visiting good friends!  This was a very enjoyable, informative trip for us.  Kallie did great and was the perfect "RV Mutt".

July 1, 2012
It's very hot again and we don't have much on the agenda today.  Tomorrow we take Sean back to central Illinois, so, he was busy gathering his things together, Kitty did some Laundry, while I washed the travel dirt off the 5th wheel.  Later, we decided to eat supper out and celebrate a great trip.  Besides, it is too hot to cook. (any excuse to not cook, right?)